My kids are pretty cool in that they have a fairly sophisticated sense of humour for their respective ages. Yes, some *may* call me a bad mother for allowing their preschool viewing habits be interspersed with episodes of Kids in the Hall and Arrested Development and I can and will accept some responsibility when and if it turns out that I have warped their fragile little minds with bawdy humour. I've definitely had moments of shock and self-doubt when I find them guffawing at jokes that I thought would fly right over their heads. But the love of comedy is one of the things that I enjoy sharing with them and they always surprise me in the most delightful way with their ability to appreciate different stylings.
One incident stands out, wherein they had been grounded from TV for some minor infraction. This is a hard one for me to stick to since there are certain household chores that are so mind-numbingly tedious that I require something to occupy my mind. Oh, hai, laundry-folding. So my cunning plan was to put on something that would be so obviously over their head that it would bore them to tears while still keeping me amused. Recalling how it had been an acquired taste for me, I put on "And Now For Something Completely Different" and hoped that the sort of drab 70's BBC quality image and obscure absurdist humour would cause them to roll their eyes and retreat to their room.
No such luck. They were riveted. Total backfire.
The last week or so, my nine-year-old has taken to cuddling up with The Well Travelled One and I to watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and surprisingly has really taken to it. She's a smart cookie, that one, but the humour on the Daily Show tends to be very adult.. not raunchy or risque, but very current events based political humour. Boring, grown-up stuff. But she laughs right along, as I eye her wondering if she actually gets the jokes or just likes Stewart's funny faces. Either way, I get to sit there and think "Man, my kid is just the friggin' coolest."
And then Jon Stewart outs the Tooth Fairy.
Outta freakin' nowhere. One minute he's talking about Lance Armstrong and the next he's undoing all my hard work and telling my nine-year-old there is no tooth fairy.
BOOM. Just like that. (That's a link to the clip. It's right at the 4:05 mark. Keep your kids out of the room.)
I froze and tried to gauge her reaction. Kid DID NOT EVEN FLINCH. It's possible she may not have noticed but my money is on the more likely scenario that she TOTALLY caught it and has since been calculating how to use this information to her benefit.
"Don't react. Just Don't. React. Don't blow this, kid. Free money for dead teeth. We need to ride this as long as possible. At least until those 12 year molars come in."
Hilarious. You really have to watch those smart cookied kids. They absorb so much more than we give them credit for. My mother learned this lesson many times....
ReplyDelete9 year-old believing in the tooth fairy? You've done well to keep it going as long as you have!
ReplyDeleteThe 11-year-old too. Either that or I've got two kids who know the value of pretending to believe.
DeleteThe Tooth Fairy is fairly low down the ranks of childhood beliefs. I believed in Santa Claus when I was a kid but I was never really bothered about the Tooth Fairy. And well done letting your kids watch Python. Brilliant stuff.
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